Instagram has special tools for content creators and business accounts that allow them to publish content more easily, and to control their audience. You may have seen that some Instagram accounts can post links in their stories. This feature was reserved for users that had 10,000 or more followers. It is now available for everyone, regardless of their follower count.
Add link to Instagram story
The option to add a link to an Instagram story is available for all accounts. The number of followers that you have does not matter, and you can use the feature on both a public and private account.
Instagram story add link
To add a link to your Instagram story, follow these steps.
- Copy the link to your clipboard so that it’s ready for pasting.
- Open Instagram.
- Swipe right to go to the Story screen.
- Take a photo or video, or pick one from the camera roll.
- Tap the Sticker button.
- Select the Link sticker.
- Paste the link into this sticker.
- Resize and move the sticker so that it’s visible but not hiding anything in your story.
- Post the image/video to your story.
Opening links in Instagram story
The original option for adding a link to a story required that users swipe up to go to the link. The sticker works differently. To open a link in an Instagram story;
- Go to the Instagram story with the link.
- Tap once on the link sticker.
- Tap on the Visit Link tooltip.
- The link will open in your default browser.
The link sticker will offer some hint as to which website you will be redirected to but if it isn’t a popular website, be careful. It’s unlikely that a phone will be infected by tapping on a malicious link but you shouldn’t take the chance. Don’t tap on links if you’re following unknown or untrustworthy accounts.
Conclusion
Instagram does not offer stats for link views. You can see who has viewed your story but you cannot see if they tapped/visited the link in it. Each story or each post in your story can have its own separate link.
Instagram does not shorten links however, it will display the domain that you will be visiting. This is easy to get around if someone is using a URL shortener. Instagram will not check where the shortened URL redirects to so if you’re trying to promote something, it’s best to use the original link.
